I can help with social anxiety too…

Fear of social interaction
So many people reach out to me from a place of isolation, social anxiety and disconnect.
What’s happening?
Well, as the brain gets used to the ease of online interaction, the real, challenging, physical social interaction we are designed to engage in becomes more and more difficult. 😫
Why am I afraid of social occasions now?
Because the brain, and the whole human system is essentially an energy saving organism and will always adopt the easiest, least threatening way of being- but because it is not always operating from a place of intelligence or understanding it doesn’t realise how unhealthy or damaging these easier ways may be in the long term. 😔
To really engage with someone face to face is hugely demanding- our nervous systems need to work really hard to read and understand all the cues flooding in at an unconscious level. It’s like a workout for our internal connection system (aka the nervous system) and after a while we can find ourselves PREFERRING the easier, less challenging, 2D interactions online because they take less energy, less effort and hold less perceivable threat 😟
Social fear, social discomfort
And when we prefer these online interactions, unless we are really careful, we will let these easier social interactions become the norm. We choose remote connection over physical, in person connection. We choose typing instead of speaking, online platforms instead of meeting. And of course, like any muscle or bodily system, the less we use something, the flabbier it gets (sorry but it’s true) … and the less we use the nervous system in real face to face social situations the less natural and spontaneous these interactions feel. And the less comfortable we feel, the less we enjoy them. 😕And the less we enjoy them the more we avoid them.
Help with Social Anxiety
But we are social animals. We have a real physical need to connect in real time, in real ways with others. 🥰😍For our health- mental and physical. And when we don’t do this enough, the body suffers. The mind suffers. Our mood, confidence and outlook suffer.
Solution focused hypnotherapy can help you engage in positive thinking- NOT toxic positivity – but a powerful, practical way of looking at your life- what’s working and what’s not, knowing that you have already got everything you need to make the changes important for your health and well-being.
Treatment for social anxiety
Our enjoyable, relaxing sessions support you to confidently examine your present, and consider your preferred future, identifying things that need to change and the steady steps needed to get where you want to be😁
It does involve connection too, so it’s all good 😊
Book a free Discovery Call now to find out more here
There a whole big wonderful world out there, just waiting to be enjoyed and explored- let Rosie’s Space help you resolve social anxiety for good, and get on out there! 🌤️

Anxiety Therapy

Stress or anxiety? Bad or good? 🤔
We are designed to have a stress response. It’s physical, and you’ll be familiar with the symptoms – racing heart, faster breathing, shaking arms, legs, feet, churning tummy, dilated pupils. At a healthy level and for a healthy period of time, stress helps us to live full and rewarding lives 🌞It evolved in the time of our ancient ancestors, to get us primed and pumped and ready to escape from danger, race after prey, or boost our strength when we needed to fight off predators 🐯 It works just the same now, as it did then, and that’s where the problems start.
Stress is triggered when the primitive part of our minds, the limbic system, thinks we are in danger, even today😟
Back in the ancient times, the stress response was needed for only a short time – you fought the predator and won, or you were dinner. You ran away from the predator and escaped, or you were dinner. And as soon as the threat was over, you would shake yourself, tell the story to others, maybe even have a laugh, and your body would fill up with calm, feel-good chemicals once more 😁
But now, the primitive mind sees threat everywhere, always, because of the way the modern world operates. We are constantly bombarded with images of death and destruction, famine and war – and the poor primitive mind isn’t all that smart.
It doesn’t know the difference between what’s far away and what’s right here. Between imagination and reality. And so our stress response is made to fire up all the time – at work, in relationships, in traffic, in Lidl, everywhere 😨😱😟😖
It gets so that it feels normal to be primed and pumped, even though its not, to feel constantly busy, tense, overwhelmed, overworked, even though it’s not. And stress chemicals are addictive. We get used to them, and feel weird and unsettled when levels drop – when we try to relax, to chill, to spend quiet time meditating, looking at the sky, whatever. We just can’t do these lovely things any more! They’re too uncomfortable.
Chronic stress, that’s stress over a sustained period of time without relief- can develop into anxiety – a long term activation of the stress response that actually changes how our brains work so that we become obsessed with risk, danger and worries.
Over time the chemicals released by this anxiety into our bodies cause insomnia, IBS, phobias, avoidance behaviours, panic attacks, OCD, GAD, social anxiety, exhaustion and fatigue and all the rest.
These conditions are all based where the problem started – deep down in the subconscious mind. So that’s where we need to begin, to turn it all around 🌞🌞👏🏽
Solution focused Hypnotherapy does just that – understands the root of the problem, and works with clients to dig out the old, troublesome roots that are choking their creativity, energy and joy. Helps clients to plant wonderful, colourful and exciting new gardens of the mind 🌻🌻🌻🌻 moving forwards into a brighter future instead of backwards into a difficult past.
And it’s deliciously easy too.
Whoever told you positive change was difficult and required willpower – was WRONG 😀
I can help you re-wire your brain, using the wonderful neuroscience of neuroplasticity to advise our work together and ensure positive, effective and long-lasting change.
Get in touch to find out more, or check out https://rosies-space.co.uk/6-week-reset-programme-for…/

How negativity can eat you alive…

TALKING ABOUT OUR PROBLEMS…is our greatest addiction.
Break the habit, for your own happiness.
Think about your JOYS instead.
TOXIC POSITIVITY IT AIN’T😊
This is NEUROSCIENCE.
Pathways in a wood
See, our brain is like this beautiful forest with lots of little pathways crossing and criss-crossing through it.
Each time we learn something new, or practice a new skill or way of living, we create a new pathway.
Like piano, or break-dancing, or Spanish, or brain surgery.
It’s not a big path at first, this new neural pathway we’re making in the brain.
It’s only a track, really, with lots of brambles and sharp thorns still sticking out, lots of stuff to trip over on the uneven surface, and so it takes lots of footfall before it widens out, flattens down, becomes easier to use.
That’s why learning new things takes practice.
Learning New Things… new pathways in the mind
But every single time we use this new path it gets broader and easier to use- fewer brambles, fewer obstacles- and so we can go along it easier, faster, better each time.
And that’s great, when the New Thing we’re learning is something good, something helpful. Like brain surgery.
But the pathway metaphor works just the same for negative habits too.
Negative Thinking becomes a broad path
Like, when we get into the habit of thinking and talking regularly about our problems – we start to carve a pathway for negative thinking in our brain.
This is made broader and wider when we get into the habit of talking and thinking about these negative things more and more often each day…how someone doesn’t like us, how we will never get what we want, how life isn’t fair, how things aren’t working out, how we are so stressed and our job is RUBBISH, how life is actually really HARD and we never seem to be HAPPY…how our knee really hurts and it’s getting worse and worse, how the world is going to hell in a handcart, how no-one is friendly anymore, no-one cares, how the system is broken and we are all doomed…
The  SUPER-HIGHWAY OF GLOOM…
How to make the negative pathway broader –
  • Hanging around with people who think and talk this way too. Following people on social media who think and talk this way too.
  • Exposing our brains to negative sights and sounds and information. Stuff on the news.
  • Stuff on social about people being mean/unhappy/etc
  • Gossip about other people.
  • Fears. Ours and other peoples. Real and imaginary.
  • Remembering past events and using them to predict how the future will go.
  • Imagining the future as a worst-case scenario just to keep us safe from disappointment.
Making the Sads Automatic
Before you know it, this new pathway in our heads becomes a super-highway of gloom, one we travel lots and lots of times every day – and worse – the brain makes the paths we use the most, AUTOMATIC.
So now, we automatically (or unconsciously) think the worst about every given situation- every dodgy expression on our friend’s face, every silence when we enter a room, every message without an emoji. That’s just how the brain works.
We now go down this negative neural pathway UNCONSCIOUSLY whenever we try to understand anything about our lives. When we try to interact with others. When we try to plan for the future.
You can see where this is going, right?
The road to nowhere, that’s where.
Without even choosing, we get to a place where we automatically see everything from the worst possible perspective.
RESULT?
Low mood
Anxiety
Sleep disturbance/nightmares
Tummy problems
Fears and Phobias
Relationship problems
Stress and Overwhelm
And the rest..
SO, what can we do about it?
LET’S DO A LITTLE PRUNING…
Start noticing the little things that are good in your life, instead.
Hack back the brambles and thorns which have grown over your positive pathway – the one you used to notice Good Stuff on. Each time you consciously decide to notice something good, pleasant, hopeful or kind, you broaden THIS neural pathway, the one that lead towards happiness.
Contentment.
Security.
Safety.
Peace.
Love.
All the good stuff.
Make this your NEW automatic route, through regular use and practice.
The modern world doesn’t promote positive thought, positive imagery, positive speech.
But we can only walk one path.
WHICH ONE WILL YOU CHOOSE?
‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.’
Robert Frost
*Solution Focused Therapy helps you actively re-wire your brain, broadening the positive pathway and letting that ole’ negative one grow over, nicely. Give me a shout for more information. 😁

Courage is not a feeling, it’s an action

Courage is not a feeling.

It’s an action.

It’s an experience.

It’s a decision.

To be afraid and do it anyway – that’s courage.

And it can be learned

And it can grow, our internal feeling of confidence and courage.

But to learn and grow into your courage, you have to get a wee bit uncomfortable

That’s the way we’re made

That’s the way our brains work.

You see, our brains have changed very little in some respects from those of our prehistoric ancestors, who lived in a time when you were as likely to get munched up by a bear as survive till bedtime. So, our brains have evolved to look for danger always and everywhere. The primitive part of our brain wants us to survive, and it doesn’t care if we thrive. It tells us to keep our heads down, to stay safe, to avoid demanding or unpredictable situations. It’s afraid that if we try new things we will fail. Or look silly. Or get laughed at.

Courage is the conscious and consistent learning to overcome that fear.

Courage is how we thrive.

And anyone can do it.

Actually, everyone must do it, to be happy.

Evolution programmed us to get a reward whenever we go outside our comfort zone – when we feel the fear and do it anyway.

The reward is the feel-good chemical dopamine, which not only makes us feel good when we push through discomfort to do new things, but also helps rewire our brains so that we feel more confident about going out of our comfort zone next time, so we get increasingly courageous and inventive and involved in the world around us, and feel increasingly energised and interested and enthusiastic and BRAVE.

We get addicted to the challenge-stress buzz of dopamine in our systems. This is one chemical addiction we DO want to cultivate!

 You see, when we stay small, safe and comfortable, our dopamine levels drop -so we feel restless and unfulfilled and unhappy. We often then look for dopamine hits in unhealthy ways like sugar-munchies or alcohol use or social-media scrolling or excessive anything. This becomes an unconscious pattern so that we get stuck in cycles of negative behaviours, trying to fill the gap in our dopamine levels which are meant to spur us on to new activities, new social interactions, new creative and positive thinking.

Long story short, when we start taking small steps away from what is familiar, safe and unchallenging into creative, unknown, unpredictable terrain it gets a wee bit uncomfortable. Our fear levels rise, our cortisol levels rise, our bodies experience the stress response AND NONE OF THIS IS HARMFUL!

In the short term this is what courage is made of. And when we take those small steps into the unknown – learn a new skill, meet some new people, take up a new activity, do some things differently, we get a surge of dopamine that FEELS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! And that’s courage.

Want to find out how you can take those first steps into cultivating your true, wild and courageous nature?

Get in touch, I’d love to talk to you.

 

How to take back Control!

It’s all about CONTROL, you know… 😉
When we feel OUT OF CONTROL, we tend to decide on Big Changes in a brave effort to feel we’re back in control again. We say RIGHT. I MEAN IT THIS TIME.
And we really DO mean it.
SO we give up sweet treats, sign up for daily meditation sessions, join a gym, re-join our old gym, sign onto motivational social media groups, weight-loss meetings, yoga practice, mountain-climbing, hang-gliding, The Grapefruit Diet, being patient with the kids, getting up an hour earlier… sure, you know yourself how it is.
We are so BRAVE 😍
We start all these THINGS… so darn often…. you gotta love our HEART!
But what happens?
Day 1 – feel wonderful, new, inspired
Day 2 – feel good, feel proud, tell everyone to do it too
Day 3- feel tired, feel cravings, feel this is LONGGGGG
Day 4- PUSH THROUGH anyway, feel good
Day 5 – Start to really RESENT this Big Change
Day 6 or maybe 7,8,9, SKIP a day because I’m TIRED
Day 9 or so… half-hearted effort but feel no better
Day 10 – forget it.
Feel even less control. Feel grumpy and fat and slow and ugly and alone, and wild boring too.
Tell ourselves, ‘I’m a total failure, a loser, a dead loss, I will never change, this is just me, this was a silly idea anyway, I’ve got NO WILLPOWER, I am WEAK, everyone else can but I can’t, life is so hard for me, yadda yadda yadda.’
But there’s good news.
IT’S NOT YOU! IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!! IT’S NOT YOU!!
It’s really not.
Really.
Big Changes simply don’t work.
And this is why…
We lose control in tiny steps, unnoticed.
As the modern world asks more of us, every day, makes more demands, we can’t keep up.
We let tiny things slip, teeny tiny things, and hardly notice.
That morning cuppa in the quiet kitchen.
That special time with someone important.
That activity or easeful moment when your soul can catch up with your body.
We don’t even notice we are letting all the little, juicy, good stuff go as the to-do list gets longer and never empties, as we get busier.
But the body does notice.
It starts to tell us in all sorts of ways.
Compulsive eating, sleeplessness, inertia and procrastination, low mood, cravings, phobias, panic attacks, GAD, and if we don’t listen, it even hits us with physical pain and chronic illness to get our attention.
‘TAKE CONTROL BACK’ it says. ‘Then you’ll feel better. ‘
SO, we decide on a Big Change to put it all right… and the dance begins all over again.
But…THERE’S A BETTER WAY 🎉 HOORAY… we are getting to the good bit…
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy practice is based on the scientific understanding that control can only be regained as it was lost.
One small step at a time.
We work with your mind and body to identify the first small steps towards regaining that control in a sustainable, healthy and individual way, and support you as you begin to climb that ladder towards contentment, calm and happiness, whatever that looks like to YOU.
And because it is YOU making decisions about which small steps to take and when, with our support, YOU learn the process, gain the tools you need, so after only a FEW SMALL STEPS you’re able to go it alone, making small, powerful changes, regaining a feeling of control, autonomy and power that allows you to keep climbing, faster and faster, stronger and stronger with every passing day.
What does it look like at the top of that ladder, for you, I wonder?
How can you find out?
Get in touch to find out more, without commitment.
That’s only one small step.
Why not take it, today?

Hypnotherapy can help with Insomnia!

What is insomnia, anyway?

Well, the NHS tell us that insomnia means you regularly have problems sleeping, and that you have insomnia if you regularly:

find it hard to go to sleep

wake up several times during the night

lie awake at night

wake up early and cannot go back to sleep

still feel tired after waking up

find it hard to nap during the day even though you’re tired

feel tired and irritable during the day

find it difficult to concentrate during the day because you’re tired

But it’s just disturbed sleep, right?

There’s very little as frustrating as insomnia. But did you know, it’s got serious long-term health consequences as well? While its best to get a solid 8 hours sleep each night, less than 6 hours sleep can contribute to depression and anxiety, immune system deterioration, circulatory diseases and even Alzheimer’s.  Sleep is really important for processing the events of the day too, releasing emotional upheaval and stress so that we can function effectively the following day. So, when you have trouble sleeping, you also have trouble coping with your day-to-day life. Research has shown that after only 4 days without REM sleep, for example – the part of your sleep which processes memories and helps you learn – your ability to concentrate, remember basic information and connect effectively with others is seriously diminished.

Where does insomnia come from?

While we may not be aware of the causes of our sleeplessness, it is often caused by emotional upheaval, anxiety and  depression and will often make these conditions worse. For many of us in this fast-paced modern world, our sleep pattern is insufficient to deal with all the stimulus and stress of the day. Our Rapid Eye Movement sleep in particular (REM) is impacted by stress, anxiety and the fast pace of living, and this causes us to have trouble both getting to sleep, and often staying asleep too. The quantity and quality of our sleep suffers when we don’t get enough REM. We can find ourselves waking in the night feeling pretty uptight and unable to get back to sleep again. This only adds to the frustration, anxiety and stress within our bodies and sets us up for more of the same the next day.

The quality of our Deep Sleep, the period of sleep when we regenerate, learn and heal, is also impacted by increasing levels of stress and anxiety, so that after a night of disturbed sleep we can wake in the morning feeling groggy and unrested, without the energy or motivation to deal with the coming day. We can find it hard to get moving in the mornings, and this adds to the growing stress-load we are accumulating through our Sleep Disturbance.

Sadly this can become a vicious cycle – waking up with stress still flooding our bodies because of sleep disruption, we go through the day in a uptight and negative frame of mind, adding further to the stress-load, and so have difficulty sleeping once more.

So it’s really important to see your GP if your sleepless nights are regular or debilitating.

But because the NHS believe that up to one third of the UK population will experience episodes of insomnia or regularly have trouble sleeping, you are definitely not alone.

And the good news is that Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with sleep problems, too. This science-based and modern therapy can effectively address many of the underlying causes of sleep disturbance. There’s no need to explore or to concentrate on problems or to go into past issues – we move you gently but effectively away from the problems and towards solutions that are the right ones for you, and that will effectively address many of the underlying causes of sleep disorders.

Clients I have worked with have reported an improvement in sleep quality from the very first night, and others have found the progressive nature of the therapy built solid and long-lasting improvements in their sleep patterns. Everyone is different, and results will be different for everyone, but Solution Focused hypnotherapy acts where sleep problems are believed to originate — in the subconscious mind— and so gets to the root of the issue in a gentle, powerful and effective way.

Hypnotherapy uses a very common state of mind called trance –  a light and relaxed focused state of attention, to access the subconscious mind. In this state, the brainwaves change, and this boosts our ability to get to sleep and also improves  the quantity and quality of our REM sleep each night, so that concentration, work performance, relationships and interactions become so much better. While you relax deeply, either in your own cosy space if online or on my super-comfy recliner chair in Rosie’s Space, I use post-hypnotic suggestion to help your subconscious rebuild the confidence and positivity of mind, the calm and competent state of being, that will allow you to deal with life more effectively, both awake and asleep!

My clients report feeling a wonderful sense of wellbeing, feeling more rested and energised, and experiencing a growing feeling of positivity and power that has allowed them to improve their lives in remarkable ways, finding their way back to happiness, fulfilment and into wonderful and exciting new chapters of their lives, just by engaging with me in their weekly sessions and listening to my special Bedtime Recording every night. While client engagement is essential to get the full benefit of the sessions, I am with you every step of the way to guide, encourage and accompany you on your journey towards a peaceful, restful and regenerative nights sleep. I work with clients from all over the world – just get in touch to find out more. I offer a free discovery call to answer any questions you might have, without obligation, so there’s nothing to lose, and a lot of good quality sleep to gain!

Hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for chronic pain

I have always found Solution Focused Hypnotherapy fascinating but never more so than when I am using it to deal with chronic pain.

Now, chronic pain is not the pain we feel when we touch a hot cooker, or hammer a nail into our finger. Chronic pain, now more commonly referred to as persistent pain, is long-lasting as the name suggests, and is always there. To understand what it is all about, and how Solution Focused hypnotherapy can help, we need first to understand a bit more about pain itself, how it arises in the body and what its function is.

The Painful Truth

Our body contains many pain receptors, or nociceptors, and their job is to warn the body when there is danger or damage to the body through the detection of pressure, heat or other stimulus. These pain receptors are dotted all over our body, but there are large concentrations of them in places where we may need them most often, such as the fingertips and the lips – just in case that cuppa is too hot, or there are nettles in the flowerbed! When a pain receptor is stimulated it sends a message immediately to the brain, and it is the brain that decides what kind of pain it is, and how severe the danger to the body. It then tells the body how to respond, sending a flood of inflammation to the site of pain to prevent further damage, to act as cushioning and protection, as well as sending reaction signals to the extremities, perhaps to snatch our hand away from the nettles or  jump backwards away from further danger. So it’s true – all pain starts in the head!

Acute pain, the sharp, localised kind, should resolve with time, as the wound heals or as we move away from the source of danger. Sometimes, however the mind can be so shocked by the acute pain we have experienced that it becomes hypervigilant, checking all the time for further pain, preoccupied with the persistence of any pain so much that it cannot relax, cannot feel healthy. The pain persists and changes from being sharp and localised to being more dull, spread out and coming from deeper within the body.

When this happens the nervous system’s automatic stress response kicks in. We BRACE our bodies in fear and concern against further pain or a worsening of the existing pain, and so the brain responds by making sure that constant inflammation is sent to the site of the original pain and also peripheral areas too, in an effort to protect against further damage. Of course,  instead this causes an increase in discomfort and pain to the sufferer. The inflammation prompts the body to feel pain, the individual becomes hyper-aware of the pain but without a solution, as the original stimulus is now long gone, and a vicious cycle ensues.  The body is now in sympathetic mode – the full fight or flight stress response- fearful that it is in mortal danger, and unable to relax, rest fully or let go of the possibility that further or increasing pain is on the way. When in this condition, we feel existing pain even more sharply, and the body’s natural self-healing systems cannot activate. Inflammation continues, and self-healing is on pause.

Of course, while in fight or flight mode, the body becomes increasingly stressed, and the individual begins to lose control of other areas of their lives as a result. The damage to emotional and social aspects of our lives when suffering from chronic pain is well known, as is often the impact on our financial and psychological well being as the situation continues.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help

An effective treatment which addresses a wide range of issues – emotional, social, psychological, environmental and relational- solution focused hypnotherapy model looks forward – helping clients to take a broad view of the issue rather than focusing backwards on the original cause of the pain, which is frequently long-gone anyway. Hypnotherapy allows clients to regain the control they have lost as the persistent pain developed. Hypnotic trance loosens and frees the focus on pain and so promotes the body’s natural self-healing state to return via the relaxation state or parasympathetic state, so that genuine healing can begin and the vicious cycle of bracing and inflammation can be addressed.

The Toll Gate of Pain

Now, not all pain travels at the same speed. We have different nerve fibres for pain which try to prioritise what we feel so that sudden, sharp and localised pain gets to the brain first, allowing us to take action that can save us from damage, sometimes even saving our lives. These urgent acute pain signals travel along A+ fibres. If our spinal cords were motorways, the A+ fibres are the sports cars, super-fast and speedy. Chronic pain, however, travels along C fibres that are more like trucks, those great big lorries that carry messages from a wide area, from deeper within the body, that don’t get anywhere very fast and don’t get out of the way very easily.

 

But the spinal cord has the equivalent of a Toll Gate along its length, which lets only one kind of pain through at a time. If you imagine the chronic or persistent pain as a string of long, heavy articulated lorries constantly moving through the toll gates, you get an idea of how unrelenting and life-changing this kind of pain can be. However, fascinatingly, the body can prioritise the kind of pain that gets through, so that if a sudden acute pain should arise in the pain receptors of the skin, such as a burn or an impact, the stream of heavy trucks  is stopped, and the sharp pain whizzes through the Toll Gate like a sports car, bringing its message of danger and damage to the brain without delay.

Additionally, we have an even faster vehicle on the spinal motorway, and this is serotonin, the pain relief hormone, which is like a motorbike, capable of super speeds. This can reach the brain faster than pain, and helps to aid our tolerance of it, and even sometimes prevents our feeling it altogether. When we are locked into Sympathetic mode, the flight or flight anxiety mode, the production of serotonin is very low. Our body does not want to relax in case of danger, and so we cut back on the production of serotonin. This means of course that we feel the pain even more sharply, as we are without the natural pain relief our body developed to help us cope.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy works to re-establish the production of lots and lots of lovely serotonin, by re-establishing our parasympathetic or healing bodily system through trance, relaxation and the significant changes in our thinking. In this way, the natural pain relief levels rise significantly and we feel less chronic pain. When we feel less chronic pain we brace less against the possibility of it worsening, and inflammation reduces. When inflammation reduces, pain reduces. When the brain sense less pain, it relaxes more. When the brain relaxes more, more serotonin can be produced. In this way, the wonderful self-healing cycle of the body is restored, and effective relief from chronic pain ensues.

Why not get in touch and start your journey to self-healing today?